<Caltech graduates Jade Livingston Karen Pham Selected for Fulbright Fellowships>

 

              <Two Caltech Grads Selected for Fulbright Fellowships>

This winter, two recent Caltech graduates are scheduled to go abroad to conduct research through

Fulbright Fellowships. Jade Livingston (BS '20), who majored in biology and is from Chappaquiddick

Island in Massachusetts, will visit Melbourne, Australia, to review marine microbes found on coral reefs.

Karen Pham (BS '20), who majored in geology and is from Orange, California, will visit Oslo, Norway, to

explore how best to include fossil data into computational evolutionary models.

The Fulbright Scholar Program, created by the U.S. Congress in 1946, may be a cultural exchange

program that gives grants to students who wish to perform research or pursue creative activities abroad.

The fellowships usually begin a couple of months after graduation, but COVID-related travel restrictions

have delayed this year's program until early 2021 at the soonest.

Livingston, whose interest in science was kindled at an early age by the exploits of French marine

explorer Jacques Cousteau, says the chance to review marine biology in Australia fulfills a childhood

dream.

Jade Livingston
Jade Livingston (BS '20)

As a freshman at Caltech, Livingston discovered a love of microbiology within the lab of Dianne Newman,

the Gordon M. Binder/Amgen Professor of Biology and Geobiology, and later worked at the Marine

Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. In Australia, she is going to work with Linda

Blackall and Madeleine van Oppen of the University of Melbourne. Blackall and van Oppen have

cultivated a coral algae which will survive higher temperatures, making them less susceptible to the coral

bleaching related to rising ocean temperatures. Livingston plans to ascertain whether that heat tolerance

is that the results of a symbiotic relationship between the algae and any microbes related to them.

Eventually, this line of research could help develop strategies to guard coral reefs from global climate

change .

"It's microbiology and marine biology and functional science. That's inspiring to me—to do science that

has practical applications. I value discovery for discovery's sake, but i prefer to understand that down the

road this might really help the planet ," Livingston says.

Pham, who was getting to begin her Fulbright add August, will instead matriculate within the fall within the

PhD program in geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, where she is going to conduct research

until travel restrictions are eased. There, she is going to work with paleoecologist Sarah Ivory to review

how the environmental evolution of the world over geological time affects species distributions and thus

their extinction risks. Pham has already won Penn State's Fund for Excellence in Graduate Recruitment

award and a University Graduate Fellowship, also as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research

Fellowship.

Karen Pham
Karen Pham (BS '20)

Currently, Pham works with George Rossman, professor of mineralogy, on using neural networks to

enhance mineral identifications. Once in Norway, Pham plans to collaborate with Lee Hsiang Liow of the

University of Oslo. Liow also has an affiliation with the explanation Museum of Oslo, and can work with

Pham on research that examines the simplest ways to include data gathered from fossils into

computational evolutionary models. Such models allow scientists to raised understand the speed at

which new species are created also as rates of extinction. Specifically, Pham plans to figure with

bryozoans, colony-dwelling aquatic invertebrates that are well-established within the fossil record.

"The Fulbright Program is a tremendous opportunity to figure face-to-face for months with researchers

who you would possibly otherwise only connect with at conferences or through email. a worldwide

perspective is crucial to develop in science, and that i am so grateful to be ready to not only work with

Lee Hsiang but to try to to so while living during a different country," Pham says. "I'm looking forward to

getting started."

More than 390,000 scholars have received a Fulbright Fellowship since the program's inception in 1946.

The Fulbright Program awards approximately 8,000 grants annually, consistent with its website.